Who cares? AAA or AA means nothing below 14 or 15 years of age. There are multiple players In SEPA & SJ from 2011 & 2012 teams that played AAA last year and this year are now AA players. There is not much difference between the top AA players and 75% of AAA players. The real separation as the kids hit 14, 15 or 16 years old. All this talk about Squirt & PeeWee AAA vs. AA is useless. Let the AAA parents do what they want and we (AA parents) will do what we want. Once the teenage years hit, the AAA parents will wake up to what we are saying. There's a kid on my sons 2012 AA team that has a 18 year old brother. His parents had the older brother play AAA at 1st year Squirt. After that he moved to AA until Midget when he moved back to AAA. 4 players on the Midget team were on his AAA Squirt team. The other players were 25% from other AAA teams the 75% played AA or A until 2nd year Bantam. The point these parent made was until puberty hits you just don't know. Puberty really separates the kids for 2 reasons: 1) Kids grow, get stronger and catch up to other kids and 2) more AAA kids than AA kids lose interest in hockey in their teenage years due to burnout.
I am not saying this will happen to all AAA kids, but burnout is more prevalent in kids that play AAA before bantam than kids that play AA or even A. This happens in all sports and not just ice hockey. Youth top level soccer, baseball and basketball players burnout more as well. This is why lacrosse is slowing down "elite" teams & camps before 13 or 14. They tell kids to play light travel and just go out and have a catch. The reason they cited was burnout. Now if a parent or kid wants to pay more money and play AAA, let them. You will not change their minds.
Also to all the AAA parent who say AA kids are jealous, in my case it is just not true. My daughter is a 2nd year Squirt and is a AAA player. She was asked by 2 mixed AAA teams and 2 girls AAA teams to tryout. We declined because she wanted to play EDP soccer this year and made one of the best teams in South/Central NJ. Ice Hockey is her favorite sport and her reasons for not playing AAA were she would miss too many games in the fall due to soccer and she wants to play multiple sports until she finally has to make a choice. Money was not an issue for AAA as EDP soccer combined with AA hockey i s about $2500 more than AAA and SJ league soccer combined.
I say to each their own and only time will tell what path was correct!